f the pedestal were found. Into his new
wall Lord Grimthorpe has built some old fragments of carved work found
in different places of the church.

The south side of this chapel is formed of the monument over the grave
of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, surnamed "good" by an admiring people,
though some modern historians hold that he had little real claim to this
title. He was the son of Henry IV., and therefore brother of Henry V.,
and was uncle of Henry VI. and guardian to the young King in the early
part of his reign. He who likes may read in any history of the part he
played in the affairs of the country: how he incurred the hatred of the
unscrupulous and vindictive Queen of Henry VI., Margaret of Anjou,
"she-wolf of France"; how he was murdered by Suffolk, with, it is said,
the connivance of the Queen and Cardinal Beaufort. It was at one time
supposed that he was buried in London, but there is little doubt that he
found a resting-place in a grave prepared for him in St. Alban's Abbey,
on March 4, 1447. This would be during the time that John Stokes was
Abbot, between the two abbacies of John of Wheathampstead. The body was
discovered in its leaden coffin during the reign of Queen Anne, when
another grave was being dug. The coffin was opened, and the duke's body
was discovered to be in a good state of preservation in the coffin,
which is described as being "full of pickle." It is said that at one
time the vergers would, for a due consideration, allow visitors to carry
away the smaller bones when, owing to the body having been removed from
the preserving fluid, nothing but a skeleton was left.

[Illustration: MONUMENT OF HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.]

The monument is a handsome one. It was probably erected by
Wheathampstead, who had been on terms of intimacy with the duke, when he
for the second time became Abbot. The canopy over the grave is richly
carved; the antelopes we see on it were the badge of the duke. His
epitaph speaks of him, among other things, as

Fraudis ineptae
Detector, dum ficta notat miracula caeci.

This refers to the story told of him by Sir Thomas More, how he
convicted an impostor who claimed to have been born blind, but to have
received sight at St. Alban's shrine, by asking him the colour of the
garments that the duke himself and others were wearing; all these
questions were correctly answered by the beggar, who forgot for the
moment that one born blind who had onl